Please do not post questions on discourse.ros.org. Questions should be posted to ROS Answers.

ROS Discourse is for news and general interest discussions. ROS Answers provides a forum which can be filtered by tags to make sure the relevant people can find and/or answer the question, and not overload everyone with hundreds of posts.

For the time being, posts from Discourse are being forwarded to the previously used ros-users mailing list to smooth the transition. For existing subscribers, it is recommended to create an account on Discourse, customize your notifications, and unsubscribe from ros-users. Direct postings to ros-users will be disabled. For further details refer to the Discourse announcement.

If you find an issue or wish to make a feature request, please see the next section

Suggestions for reporting issues/requesting features

First, check the issue trackers: Known issues, often with patches or workarounds, are generally found there. If you have something to add to an existing issue, add it as a comment to the issue, rather than posting to the mailing lists.

If you're not sure what you found is a bug you can ask on ROS Answers. If the problem is confirmed as a bug, please then open a ticket. Tickets are preferred if you are posting about a bug because they will be reviewed by the developers.

Guidelines for asking a question (Please read before posting)

Do Not

The following are not appropriate questions:

general debugging/programming questions not specific to ROS

questions about software that is not ROS related

your homework

Don't contact the developers/maintainers directly.

The community can't see question or answer(s) not asked/answered publicly.

Open Source development works best when the entire community participates in discussions and helps to answer questions.

Send all questions to ROS Answers or the appropriate mailing list, and report all issues to the issue tracker.

On ROS Answers, do not use answers for discussion, subsequent questions or just updates. Instead, edit your original post or use the comment functionality.

Do

Be as specific as possible, with steps to reproduce.

Describe exactly what you were doing or are trying to do, and exactly what, if anything, went wrong. If you say, "rviz doesn't work," we can't help you.

If following a Tutorial or online instructions provide a link to the specific instructions.

Etiquette

Assume 'good faith': It's easy to mis-interpret the meaning or tone of comments on the internet. Assuming good faith gives the benefit of the doubt to those trying to help you, avoiding: insulting well meaning community members, and poisoning the mood. Assuming 'good faith' when responding almost always works better even if the original response was not in fact in good faith.

Please don't send your question more than once: The question was seen. If you didn't get a response then likely nobody has had time to answer you. Alternatively, it could be that nobody knows the answer. In any case, sending it again is poor form and akin to shouting and is likely to aggravate a large number of people. This also applies to crossposting. Try to pick the forum which you think matches best and ask there. If you are referred to a new forum, provide a link to the old discussion.

It's considered bad form to list your personal deadlines; Community members answering questions also have them.

Do not beg for help. If there is someone willing and able to help with your problem, you usually get a response. Asking for faster answers will mostly have a negative effect.

Do not add unrelated content to posts. The content of posts should be focused on the topic at hand and not include unrelated content. Content, links, and images unrelated to the topic are considered spam.

Guidelines for Moderating

It is the responsibility of the community to maintain the community ethos. We use several public forums to communicate about our work: mailing lists, issue trackers and ROS Answers. If you see behavior in any of these forums that does not meet our community standards, please promptly respond following the guidelines below, always remaining courteous and polite.

Spam in general

Delete spam immediately. If the account has been created just for spamming, block the account as well.

ROS Answers

If a duplicate question is asked, comment on the new question to say that questions should not be duplicated, then delete the less detailed of the two.

If an inappropriate (e.g., rude or offensive) question or answer is given, quickly reword it if possible, including a comment with the reason for the edit. If it cannot be reworded easily, leave a comment as to why the question was deleted and delete it, suggesting that the submitter resubmit following the guidelines.